


and all the king's men

by OverTheMoonShine



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, M/M, Mentions of Blood, People get hurt in this, ambiguous ending, secret agent AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 05:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19882684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OverTheMoonShine/pseuds/OverTheMoonShine
Summary: “Go ahead,” Hyungwon says, and to anyone else, he would have sounded calm, but Wonho can hear the slight tremor in his voice. “You know what you have to do.”(Wonho doesn't know how he'll ever forgive himself.)





	and all the king's men

**Author's Note:**

> the tweets that inspired this:  
> \- [one](https://twitter.com/legofroggo/status/1146068907351953409)  
> \- [two](https://twitter.com/legofroggo/status/1146391796374654976)

The funny thing is that Hyungwon had taught him about forgiveness and letting go. 

Now that Wonho thinks about it, maybe it’s because all other spats and arguments would have seemed trivial compared to the grudge Hyungwon has been holding in his heart for god knows how long.

His hand is shaking, it’s shaking so damn hard that if Hyungwon really wanted to, he could have easily disarmed him. But the younger man is just watching him, his gaze cool and collected, although Wonho knows better - no,  _ thinks _ he knows better, he really can’t be sure of anything any more. 

“Go ahead,” Hyungwon says, and to anyone else, he would have sounded calm, but Wonho can hear the slight tremor in his voice. “You know what you have to do.”

“How could you do this?” Unlike Hyungwon, Wonho’s never been able to keep his emotions in check, not when he’s worked up - it’s something that the younger man has always cautioned him about, especially working in a field like theirs.  _ But that’s what you’re here for Hyungwonnie, to keep me in check _ , he’d answer, laughing, their arms bumping lightly against each other. “I thought you were my fr-”

_ Friend? _ There’s no way he can finish the sentence, not when the word  _ friend _ can never capture the full breadth of their relationship. Not when he’s no longer sure of the person who’s standing in front of him, the person he’s aiming his gun at.

“The question is, how can I not do this?” There’s a thin smile on Hyungwon’s face. “Wonho, think about it, you know what they have done.”

(He doesn’t want to think about it, he doesn’t want to acknowledge the niggling suspicions he’s always hidden deep in his heart about the Agency, not when they’ve given him so much, made him achieve more than anyone he’d ever imagined he could be.)

///

Hyungwon had always said the Agency is nothing without its best agents, and Wonho is nothing without Hyungwon. 

Growing up, Wonho - then, still Hoseok, just Hoseok - is the same tired story of a boy who loses his parents, or maybe his parents were the ones who had lost him, and ends up in an orphanage, who somehow gets taken in by a mysterious agency which starts training him at an institute with other boys and girls, equally as lost as he is. 

He stumbles through, bleary eyed and barely conscious of the world outside of the four walls of his Institute, passing all the tests and assessments thrown at them, doing better than be expects. (There are rumors about what the Agency does to children who fail out, after all, they have to keep the secret and any loose ends need to be tied up). Even so, everything is in grey-scale, it’s routine, and he knows he just needs to keep his head down and keep pressing on, and one day, he’ll emerge out of this tunnel as an 18-year old, ready for the world. 

The Agency has provided for all he would need, all he has to do is just serve them. And he believes in what they're doing, he truly does. How could they be wrong, when they've taken him in, given him a warm place to stay in and food on the table, taught him on subjects beyond whatever normal kids his age would ever dream of learning?  _ We chose you because you're special _ , an older Agent had told him once,  _ You’ll grow up to do great things.  _

But one day, an 8 year old appears at the institute. His eyes are fierce, burning with a fire whose heat Hoseok doesn't understand the deep source of. Yet, there is something about the younger boy that is strangely magnetic (maybe it’s the thirst in his eyes, the fiery desire of ambition, that Hoseok knows is lacking within himself that draws him to the boy), and Hoseok finds himself sitting next to him at dinner, offering him an extra bread-roll from his plate. 

Over the weeks, the fire in the boy’s eyes appears to disappear, but it still takes a few months until he warms up enough to Hoseok’s advances before finally letting him in.  _ You can call me Hyungwon, my parents died in a car accident,  _ is the first full sentence Hyungwon had said to him, and the way he says it prompts Hoseok to pull the younger boy into a hug. 

(Instead of pulling away like Hoseok expects him to, Hyungwon returns the hug, holds onto Hoseok as if he’s his only anchor to existence. And if there are tear-stairs on Hoseok’s shirt when they finally separate, that’s a secret that the two of them will keep in their hearts and take to their graves.)

When they are both 15 (their friendship spanning a long full 7 years of more tests, more physical assessments, and more training than their bodies can handle at times), Hyungwon asks once, in an insinuating tone Hoseok chooses to ignore, “Isn't it funny how we’re all orphans here? I wonder what happened to everyone's families.”

The comment comes up because a new child has joined the Institute: a quiet, solemn boy called Changkyun, just a few years younger than them. His cheeks are tear-streaked when the Agency first brings him in, and he’s trembling like a kitten that’s been displaced from its home. At dinner, Hyungwon had immediately made in the direction of the boy, taking care to talk to him and ask him about his hobbies and interests, in such a carefully kind way that has Hoseok wondering. 

With the age difference between them, they don’t see Changkyun as much after that, the boy funneled into a separate training programme for younger children. Even so, from the way he cranes his neck around during meal times, Wonho knows Hyungwon is always watching for the younger boy.

Hyungwon continues, and even if his tone is bland, the underlying meaning of his words are clear, “No one here has any family. Don’t you find it odd how it’s turned out that way?”

“It's just a coincidence,” Hoseok answers, because there's no reason, no proof why it would have been anything but. “The Agency is under the government. We’re set up to protect the people.”

It’s just a coincidence that Hyungwon doesn’t speak to him at all after the conversation, for a week after. 

The week is long and full of agony, for Hoseok, even if he does end up speaking more to the other teens in their programme. He befriends Hyunwoo, a year older than him, and who’s been in the Institute since he was born. 

When Hyungwon does come back, there’s an unspoken agreement for them never to bring up the conversation ever again. 

“In case you’re still hungry,” is what Hyungwon says as his peace offering, handing Hoseok a bread-roll stolen from the dining table. He refuses to look at Hoseok in the eye, almost as if he’s afraid that Hoseok would reject him. But never, Hoseok has never been able to say no to him.

“Hungry for your company,” teases Hoseok, understanding the bread-roll for what it is  _ I was wrong to bring this up, I’m sorry _ . He splits it in half, and gives Hyungwon the other piece,  _ I forgive you, I always will. _

///

It’s no surprise that after graduation, Hyungwon and Hoseok (now Wonho, their code-names given at age 18, a name he accepts so whole-heartedly he leaves Hoseok completely behind in the past) are paired up to be agents together. With their chemistry both on and off the field during training, the announcement isn’t anything much to celebrate because it’d been evident from the start. Even then, Wonho laughs and throws an arm around Hyungwon, pulling him into a hug. 

“You’ve got my life in your hands, and I’ve got yours, from now on!” Wonho exclaims, giddy that they’ve finally graduated. 

Hyungwon rolls his eyes but there’s a smile on his face and he doesn’t resist the hug. Even then, there’s something solemn about the way he answers, “We’re in it till the end.”

The missions go well. Hyungwon and Wonho prove to be an unstoppable duo, executing flawless missions time and time again. That’s not to say that they don’t find themselves in tough spots, moments where Wonho is sure their adventure has finally ended. 

Their first brush with failure (and death, the two concepts are inseparably entwined with each other - just like how there can’t be a Wonho without a Hyungwon) is when they’re on a mission in Busan, trying to take down a drug lord that’s been causing too much trouble. With only an office table as their cover, the drug lord’s squad firing endlessly at them, Wonho turns to Hyungwon, the panic evident in his expression. “We’ll get through this, won’t we?” he asks.

Fear in his eyes as well, Hyungwon’s hand finds Wonho’s, squeezes it tight. They’ve held hands plenty of times before, yet this time, an electric current shoots up Wonho’s arm, straight to his heart. 

_ It’s just because we’re about to die _ , is what he says to himself, yet this excuse turns flimsy when it keeps happening again and again, even when they are far from danger, casually linking hands as they return to the Agency.

(What Wonho doesn’t want to ask himself is why they seem to hold hands so often, so much so that he feels like he’s constantly on the verge of being electrocuted, the touch enough to send his heart racing.)

After each successful mission, the two end up in Wonho’s room, sprawled across the bed, chests rising up and down in sheer joy and relief of still being alive. “Till it finally ends,” Hyungwon would always, always say, with such a bittersweet smile that makes Wonho want to wrap him up in his arms and never let go.

And just like that, a few years fly by, with each successful mission seeing their status rise in the Agency. It’s perfect, wonderful - and even with their lives constantly on the line, Wonho doesn’t think he would want to trade this for anything else (he doesn’t acknowledge the voice that tells him to  _ close the gap, you’re so close _ when Hyungwon turns to look at him sometimes, with an unreadable expression, when they’re lying on his bed, their faces barely inches apart).

It’s perfect - until everything seems to spiral out of control.

It starts with Shownu and IM. 

“X has found out about the details of another Mission,” the Director’s tone is flat, tired. An enemy agency that just seems intent on disrupting their missions, X has always been a problem for the Agency. However, within the past few months, X has been hitting the Agency hard, always one step ahead of them as if they know what the Agency’s doing. “There has been… One casualty.”

On the screen, an image of Shownu appears, so covered in blood and rubble Wonho can barely even make out the shape of his friend. Beside him, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hyungwon tense, his knuckles white from how tightly he’s gripping the arm chair. 

But before there’s even the slightest bit of time to register the extent of Shownu’s injuries (why is there so, so much blood?), the Director continues, “They have also taken IM.”

Wonho’s words come out in a garbled rush of worry, overlapping with the Director’s next sentence, “What do you mean they have  _ also _ taken Kyun?”

“Agent  _ IM _ ,” the Director emphasises his code-name pointedly, but the blood roaring in Wonho’s ears drowns out his tone, “has gone missing in the mess of the situation. We suspect that he’s currently in the enemy’s hands but we are searching hard for his whereabouts.”

“You better b-” before he can get the rest of the words out because he’s angry, he’s so angry and frustrated and worried, the storm of emotions is tearing him apart from the inside, Hyungwon places a hand on his arm, and it’s as if suddenly there’s a vacuum, Hyungwon the source, draining all the negative emotion away. 

Sighing, a bone-tired sigh that speaks of countless late nights, the Director continues, “We’ll find Agent IM. Now, please go get some rest.”

(If Hyungwon hadn’t snuck into his room that night, soundlessly climbing into his bed, wrapping his arms tight, so tight, around him, there’s no way Wonho would have slept a wink. 

“I’ve got you,” murmurs Hyungwon, his breath hot against Wonho’s neck. They don’t talk about how bad Wonho is shaking, how before Hyungwon had came, Wonho had been wide awake, tears down the side of his face. “Everyone will be alright in the end, you don’t have to worry.”

They don’t talk about how just as Wonho drifts to sleep, Hyungwon says, “I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry for everything that’s about to happen. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”)

They find Changkyun one and a half weeks later, blind-folded with his hands tied behind his back, bruises on almost every part of his body, locked alone in an underground cellar. 

“I’m fine, I’m alright,” he says, his deep voice cracking from the lack of use, when Jooheon - code-name Honey, an agent that had trained with him in the Institute, growing closer as they’d grown up - hovers around him, trying to determine the exact extent of the damage, but it's hard for Jooheon to judge something he can't see. Changkyun tries to smile, but there’s something lacking, almost like he’s forgotten how to and he’s doing a rough approximation of what he thinks a smile should look like. “Don’t worry about me.”

The nightmares that keep him awake, propelling him out of his sleep with a half-formed scream, every night, the way Changkyun startles whenever anyone speaks to him too loud or touches his shoulder when he’s not looking say otherwise.

Shownu’s condition stabilises, yet he doesn’t wake up. Lying in the hospital bed, his eyes blissfully closed, the only thing that Wonho feels thankful for is that he doesn’t look like he’s in pain.

But it doesn’t end there.

X goes for Kihyun next, one of the Agency’s top intelligence officers. Invaluable to the Agency, Kihyun works off-field, assembling dossiers of information with so much detail that Wonho thinks he knows his target better than their loved ones know them.

Except that X misses ( _ maybe it wasn’t a miss _ , is a thought that makes Wonho’s blood run cold,  _ maybe it was intentional _ ) and ends up hitting Minhyuk, his fiancee, a bystander who’s life is completely apart from the Agency, Kihyun the only bridge.

“I’m sorry, Min, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry,” Kihyun whispers, head pressed against the operating glass window, as he watches the doctors do their work on Minhyuk, after an explosive meant for him detonates when Minhyuk is around instead.  _ It’s not fair, _ Wonho thinks in the face of all this pain,  _ I just want to protect them all.  _ Face ashen, Kihyun mumbles these words like a prayer, “Please, please pull through. I’ll do anything if you’re alright.”

Against all odds (he flat-lines two times, and Kihyun lets out a cry that’s so achingly sad that Wonho thinks he can never feel happiness the same way again), Minhyuk makes it through. “But he may never be able to walk again,” says the doctor, scrubs slightly stained with blood, when he meets Kihyun outside the operating theatre. “The shrapnel hit his spinal cord. It was everything we could do to get most of it out.”

Despite Minhyuk’s assurance that he’s fine,  _ Ki, this isn’t your fault at all _ , Kihyun’s engagement ring burns hot against his skin, and he can’t do anything but leave it in Minhyuk’s open hand.  _ Please look at me, Ki, don’t go. _

Frozen in the middle of it all, Wonho can only watch, eyes wide open in fear and confusion  _ why is this happening _ , as it all unfolds. He’d lose it from the utter insanity of it all, if Hyungwon wasn’t by his side, his physical presence enough to calm him. Hyungwon, who seems to be growing thinner and thinner by the day, as if he’s fading with each incident that happens. 

“Just the stress, you know,” Hyungwon explains with that smile of his when he’s trying to say something funny and wants the other person to agree. Any 5 year old can see through him, with how pale and tired he looks. 

“Hey, we’ve got to stay strong for the others. It may not be long until everything ends,” he continues. The way he says it, the ominous feeling that runs undercurrent his words, doesn’t sit comfortably with Wonho. As if he knows that there’s still more to come, but that’s not possible, because what can be worse than whatever’s already happening? 

(And why would Hyungwon even know?, is what the little voice in him asks, but he shuts it down, locks it in a box and throws away the key. There’s no time to have any doubt, not in the situation they’re in.)

Hyungwon had once said that the Agency is nothing without its best agents, and with the way that they have taken down half of their top agents, paralysed the others into inaction, Wonho is starting to realise he’s right.

The Agency has fallen apart and X is to blame.

///

The sirens blaring across the head-quarters jolt Wonho out of a hard won sleep. But that’s secondary, because he’s up in a second, already reaching out to strap on his gun and check that it’s loaded. “Wonho, are you in the building?” his communicator is buzzing in his ear, “X has infiltrated headquarters.”

“What?” Wonho exclaims into the receiver, completely forgetting the need to stay quiet during a mission. As he ducks across a corridor, the intelligence officer relays the coordinates of where they have traced the X agent to, and lets him know that they’re still trying to reach Hyungwon. 

Racing through the hallways as quiet as he can to the destination point, Wonho can’t resist a joke, “He’ll be here somewhere, maybe he’s still sleeping.”

But the laughter dies when he turns the corner and runs into the first body, that’s slumped to the side. He takes a few precious moments to check if the agent is still alive, and breaths a sigh of relief. The X agent has been busy. Heart in his throat, Wonho looks up and sees another incapicitated Agency member,  _ stay calm, you know what to do. _

_ You know what to do _ , he repeats the mantra over and over, as he races through the rooms, past staircases, finally reaching the room where the X agent is in. Wonho takes a deep breath, it’s been a while since he’s on the field alone, without Hyungwon by his side. But that’s okay because being an agent means knowing how to operate independently.

_ You know what to do, you can do it _ , he tells himself, when he barges into the room, and aims the gun at the X agent, who is crouching down, with a complicated device full of wires in his hands. The agent sets down the device (it’s a bomb, the Agency would later tell him, he was trying to blow up the building), and turns around slowly.

_ You know what t -  _ , the words die off when he comes face to face with Hyungwon.

“I didn’t want you to find out this way,” Hyungwon says, quiet in the deafening stillness of the room, and Wonho honestly doesn’t know what to do.

///

A day before Hyungwon turns 18, Wonho had snuck into his room, intent on hiding various celebratory messages in random corners. What he doesn’t expect is to find a letter addressed to him, underneath Hyungwon’s pillow, alongside a pen. It’s crinkled, probably because he can imagine Hyungwon shoving it underneath the pillow, right before he turns in for the night. The thought of him being the last thing on Hyungwon’s mind before he sleeps makes him feel strangely happy, but Wonho sets that aside to unpack later (or rather, ignore forever).

Curiosity getting the better of him, Wonho can’t stop himself from opening the letter.

_ Dear Hoseok,  _ it reads, in Hyungwon’s usual messy handwriting, which Wonho reads with ease, after the number of notes they’ve traded during boring lectures.  _ As we come closer to being deployed as agents for the Agency, there’s something I need to tell you. _

_ I know you have appreciated everything that the Agency has done for you. Honestly, you’re going to be one of the best agents they have. But there’s more to the Agency than meets the eye. I’m sure you know this too, deep down. _

_ My parents didn’t die in a car accident. It was - _

The rest of the words in the letter is canceled out, the strike-through is bold and heavy. Hyungwon had gone through the words multiple times, so that whatever he had said in the rest of the letter can’t be read anymore, as much as Wonho squints and tries, holding the paper up to the light to see if any of the words can shine through.

_ There’s something I need to tell you, there’s something I need to tell you _ , Hyungwon’s words loop endlessly in his mind, even after he leaves his room, his initial mission of hiding messages long forgotten. Between the two of them, they had sworn to not keep any secrets from each other,  _ because if we don’t trust each other, who else can we trust?  _ Hyungwon had said, as they’d linked their pinkies together. 

The next day, on his birthday, Hyungwon refuses to adopt a code-name. 

“I’ll stay with the name I’ve been born with,” he says, steady even in the face of the Agency’s director’s fury. “Anyway, I don’t have anyone I need to protect with a code-name. My family is gone.”

Refusing to accept his stance, the Agency gives him one anyway: H. One.

They’re worn down eventually because no matter how many punishments dealt out to him, how many privileges taken away, Hyungwon doesn’t respond to H. One. 

“My name is Chae Hyungwon,” he says. “And you’ll never take that away from me.”

///

“Wonho, think about it, you know what they have done.” is what Hyungwon says, but Wonho can’t lower the gun. The Agency has taught him all about enemies who try to weasel their way out with honeyed words and sugary lies,  _ don’t believe them, don’t listen to them _ , but what does he do if the person on the receiving end of his gun is - or was, he doesn’t want to think about it - his best friend?

There are two Hyungwons whose heart Wonho is aiming his gun at right now: there is his partner, the person he would trust with every breath of his life, whom could have been Something More if either of them ever had the courage to admit; then there is the one who is part of X, who is the reason for why Shownu is in a coma, why Minhyuk can no longer walk and Kihyun can longer look him in the eye the guilt weighing down on him, why Changkyun has nightmares that Jooheon can never help him get over. 

The two are superimposed over each other, and Wonho can't make out what the blurry new figure the composite image produces.

“It'll be fine,” Hyungwon says, as if they were at training and this was just a test Wonho needs encouragement passing. The younger had always been his source of strength, ready with motivational slogans that’d help him get through the battery of tests all child agents had to go through constantly. “There’s only one way that this can end.”

“There has to be another way.”

“They’ll come for me anyway.” Hyungwon’s gaze doesn’t waver. Maybe it’s vain hope, but Wonho imagines he can see sadness, almost regret, in Hyungwon’s eyes. 

“I’d rather it be you,” he says, the slightest pause right before  _ you _ betraying the fear he feels. “Do it. Please, Hoseok.”

And because Wonho has never been able to refuse Hyungwon, he pulls the trigger. 

It is loud, louder than anything he’s ever heard before, which doesn’t make sense because he’s fired more than a million shots before. Maybe it’s so loud that it wipes out his sense of hearing, he sees Hyungwon fall to the ground, almost in slow motion, but he hears nothing.

Not the sound of Hyungwon’s body hitting the ground, not the sound of him falling to his knees reaching out to cradle Hyungwon, and certainly not the sound of his anguished cry, as he buries his head in Hyungwon’s shoulder, the blood sticky and heavy on his hands.

He hears nothing until the Agency finds him,  _ You did a good job to protect our organisation and all our agents. Think of how many others he could have hurt, think of all your friends whom he’s already hurt _ , is what they had said, but now Wonho can hear the cracks in their words, the possibility that whatever they’re saying isn’t as true and pure as he had previously thought.

And as they finally take Hyungwon’s cor - no, body, out of his arms, bundle it up unceremoniously in grey sheets like it’s nothing important, something hardens around Wonho’s heart like cold iron. 

If there’s any truth to what Hyungwon had said, any possibility that what he believed in was real, Wonho promises himself, the blood from his wounds mixing with Hyungwon’s blood on his hands, he’s going to find out the truth. 

As he looks at the blood drying on his hands (it’s funny how he can’t tell which is from Hyungwon and which is his), Wonho swears to himself,  _ for Hyungwon, he will, he has to. _ There’s no other way he can live with himself if he doesn’t.

Whatever it takes, he’ll uncover the truth, even if it means he has to take down the Agency himself. Even if it means he has to face up to the fact that whatever they have been doing, all the lives they have ruined, the lives they have taken, has all been for a lie (and in his heart of hearts, Wonho knows now that nothing is as innocent as it ever seems).

Alone in the room, with the gore around him as his only company, Wonho finds that he no longer has any tears left to cry. There’s only calm collected anger in his heart (was this what Hyungwon felt all the time?), and a mission to accomplish.

And if there’s one thing that Wonho does well, it is complete his missions. Nothing’s going to stop him.

_ You’ve got my life in your hands, and I’ve got yours. _

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry .___.
> 
> come talk to me (you can yell at me too, it's fine) on [twitter](https://twitter.com/legofroggo) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/legofroggo)


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